Bill That Could Lead to Slavery Reparations Proposals May be Nearing Consideration on House Floor

After more than three decades, a bill that could lead to slavery reparations proposals appears set for a major step forward. The House Judiciary Committee plans to mark up the bill and vote on it Wednesday.

If the legislation is reported out of committee, it would set up the first floor vote on the measure since its introduction in 1989.

"This is what we call the next step," Representative Sheila Jackson Lee told CBS News. "America has never acknowledged the original sin, and that if you look at African-Americans today, the disparities that were entrenched in slavery still exist." 

The Texas congresswoman is the lead sponsor of the bill, known as H.R. (House Resolution) 40. It was initially introduced by the late Michigan Representative John Conyers.

The measure would establish a commission to examine the implications of slavery from 1619 to the present and develop reparations proposals for African-Americans.

"I think people want healing, they want repair and they understand that reparations is not an injustice, it is just," said Jackson Lee.

....

The House bill has 175 sponsors - more than double the number in 2019. It has never advanced out of committee but is expected to this time since Democrats outnumber Republicans on the panel.

"Seeing this type of movement after so many years of being dormant, it's extremely significant and represents a unique time not only socially but politically," said Driesen Heath, a researcher and racial justice advocate at Human Rights Watch, who testified at a sub-committee hearing on the bill earlier this year.

During that hearing, critics charged reparations were counterproductive and divisive. 

"Reparation teaches separation," former NFL player Herschel Walker said in an opening statement. "It will only create division with the different races which I feel continue to tell us we are African-American rather than just an American."